Materialise collaborates with ITRI

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Belgian 3D printing service provider Materialise officially announced on 17th August that it will collaborate with ITRI on its project, the Factory of Future. ITRI will obtain the advanced 3D printing management software owned by Materialise through the collaboration. This software includes Magics, Streamics and Build Processor.

image: nanjixiong

Founded in 1990, Materialise has concentrated on the research and development of solutions for the transfer of data to additive manufacturing machines. Their suite of industrial software now includes data preparation and design optimization tools, programs to integrate 3D printing into production environments, and software and control systems used by machine manufacturers to bridge the gap between applications and 3D printers.

ITRI is the top 3D printing research institute in Taiwan and has been developing metal 3D printing technology for a long time. In 2015, ITRI launched the first metal 3D printer in Taiwan, which is an important part of the Factory of the Future project. To apply metal 3D printing on a large-scale, a high-performance management software is as vital as the equipment and this is why these two giants found each other.

image: nanjixiong

Streamics, to some degree, could be seen as the exclusive management system for 3D printers. On the one hand, it collects 3D printing data and optimizes the 3D printing process, thus improving the stability and fluency of 3D printing. On the other hand, it can drastically reduce the manual mistakes by using software automation tools such as automated component labels, therefore further improving efficiency. Besides, this software is able to monitor 3D printers and store all the related construction data to a central system in order to guarantee its traceability and repeatability.

The main function of Build Processor is to create the connection between Streamics system and the 3D printers, which could greatly reduce the 3D printing process. Build Processor also provides sophisticated slicing services and imports data into 3D printers.

image: nanjixiong

Beefed up in such a strong way with this collaboration, I believe ITRI will be sure to see a huge progression in its 3D printing abilities.